Dominican Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, the 86-year-old liberation theologian, said his work is "a love letter to God, to the church and to my people."

Asked if he would change anything he has written in the past 40 years, the Peruvian who is often referred to as "the father of liberation theology," said no one would write their beloved the same love letter after 40 years, "but it is the same love."

It used to be that just saying the words "liberation theology" around Catholics was enough to start a schism-level fight, or at least raise a red flag in Rome.

The theological movement that focused on the poor emerged out of the church's social justice ferment in the 1960s, but it was always viewed by conservatives as an irredeemably Marxist version of the Gospel.

Worse, they said it was a tool of Soviet communists who were using the Roman Catholic church to foment revolution in Latin America and beyond, and at the very height of the Cold War.